Community-based forest management within the context of institutional decentralization in Honduras

Nygren, Anja

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2004.11.002

Cited by 123 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…It is entirely possible that the local user groups that engage with the local government administration are in relatively privileged positions and push for a more active forest governance program to strengthen their own narrow, selfinterested objectives in the forestry sector. Such processes of elite capture, which several studies report to be a common byproduct of decentralization reforms (35,36), cannot be ruled out on the basis of our results.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 54%

Decentralization can help reduce deforestation when user groups engage with local government

Wright

Andersson

Gibson

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

105

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Policy makers around the world tout decentralization as an effective tool in the governance of natural resources. Despite the popularity of these reforms, there is limited scientific evidence on the environmental effects of decentralization, especially in tropical biomes. This study presents evidence on the institutional conditions under which decentralization is likely to be successful in sustaining forests. We draw on common-pool resource theory to argue that the environmental impact of decentralization hinges on the ability of reforms to engage local forest users in the governance of forests. Using matching techniques, we analyze longitudinal field observations on both social and biophysical characteristics in a large number of local government territories in Bolivia (a country with a decentralized forestry policy) and Peru (a country with a much more centralized forestry policy). We find that territories with a decentralized forest governance structure have more stable forest cover, but only when local forest user groups actively engage with the local government officials. We provide evidence in support of a possible causal process behind these results: When user groups engage with the decentralized units, it creates a more enabling environment for effective local governance of forests, including more local government-led forest governance activities, fora for the resolution of forest-related conflicts, intermunicipal cooperation in the forestry sector, and stronger technical capabilities of the local government staff.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 54%

Decentralization can help reduce deforestation when user groups engage with local government

Wright

Andersson

Gibson

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

105

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Scholars analyzing decentralized forest management have built on institutionalism to suggest that empowerment can result from transfer of various types of powers from higher to lower levels of governance in political and administrative hierarchies (Larson 2005, Nygren 2005). Agrawal and Ribot (1999) and Agrawal and Gibson (1999) classify powers transferred through CBFM into three categories: legislative, executive, and judicial.…”

Section: The History Of Cbfm In Kenyamentioning

confidence: 99%

Illusions of empowerment? Questioning policy and practice of community forestry in Kenya

Chomba¹,

Nathan²,

Minang³

et al. 2015

E&S

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ABSTRACT. The extent to which community forestry (CF) contributes to empowerment of local communities remains hotly contested. We develop a unified theory of empowerment at the intersection of asset-based agency and institution-based opportunity and apply it to examine the extent to which the implementation of CF has led to local empowerment. Our empirical data are drawn from review of national level policies and a field study of Ngare Ndare Community Forest Association (CFA) in Kenya. We investigated what types of powers were transferred to the local level, how representative the local institution was of the local community, and how its formation and composition affected the empowerment of socially and economically differentiated groups, with competing claims over the forest resource. We found that national forest policies and actors transferred minimal powers that enabled local communities to execute forest protection and conservation roles, while maintaining legislative powers and control of economic benefits centrally; and, that representation within the CFA was highly skewed in favor of small and already powerful local elites. We discuss the findings in the light of the literature on empowerment to develop insights about how to more effectively manage processes to empower local communities through appropriately representative institutions.

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“…While abundant anecdotal evidence of preference distortion among beneficiary communities has been reported in a varied literature dominated by sociologists and anthropologists (Chabal and Daloz, 1999;Bierschenk et al, 2000;Blair, 2000;de Haan et al, 2002;Conning and Kevane, 2002;Eversole, 2003;Abraham and Platteau, 2004;Nygren, 2005;Ban et al, 2010), the issue of intra-community preference aggregation and its consequences on project choice have been recently explored by economists. The latter often represent the local decision mechanism as a form of representative democracy with (probabilistic) voting in which the poor, who have different preferences from the rich, have a relatively small weight (Bardhan and Mookherjee, 2000, 2005, 2006. From this framework, they have derived predictions that are subsequently put to empirical testing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elite capture through information distortion: A theoretical essay

Platteau

Somville

Wahhaj

2014

Journal of Development Economics

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract We investigate donor-beneficiary relationships in participatory development programs, where (i) communities are heterogeneous and dominated by the local elite, (ii) the elite strategically propose a project to the donor, knowing that the latter has imperfect knowledge of the needs of the target population. We analyze how changes in the donor's outside option or information about the needs of the target population affect elite capture. Our central, paradoxical result is that a more attractive outside option, or a higher quality of donor's information may end up encouraging the local elite to propose a project that better matches their own preference rather than the preference of the grassroots. Moreover, in the case where the noise in the donor's information follows a normal distribution, we find that a better outside option generally decreases elite capture but improved information about the needs of the target population is likely to increase elite capture. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may

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Community-based forest management within the context of institutional decentralization in Honduras

Cited by 123 publications

References 36 publications

Decentralization can help reduce deforestation when user groups engage with local government

Decentralization can help reduce deforestation when user groups engage with local government

Illusions of empowerment? Questioning policy and practice of community forestry in Kenya

Elite capture through information distortion: A theoretical essay

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